18th February, 2009

MICAH TILLMAN

United States

I'd like to open this postcard with my condolences to everyone affected by the fires in Victoria. Recently, here in the US, many have been dealing with ice and power outages. But not fires.

ON CAPITOL HILL: Congress passed the 'stimulus' bill but it was hardly a model of bipartisanship. PICTURE: Michael Slonecker (www.sxc.hu) "The failure of Democrats to deliver the bipartisanship celebrated by President Obama is just another reminder that it takes two to tango. You can't come to a compromise when the other side won't compromise."

Of course, we're in the middle of winter, and y'all aren't. So the confluence of fire and ice should, perhaps, not be surprising. Nevertheless, I hope everyone you love is safe and doing well.

The big news (stateside), as of Saturday, is that our Congress has passed that huge “stimulus” bill they've been working on.

To be more accurate, I should say the Democrats in Congress passed it. No Republicans in the House of Representatives voted for it, and only three Republicans in the Senate voted for it.

The failure of Democrats to deliver the bipartisanship celebrated by President Obama is just another reminder that it takes two to tango. You can't come to a compromise when the other side won't compromise.

Dialogue, no matter what President Obama wanted us to believe during the campaign, evidently can't solve all problems.

Oh well. Unilateral voting is better than unilateral shootouts, I suppose. At least they (pretended) to try.

What I find surprising about the whole thing is that Congress was holding back all this money. If they can end the recession by releasing it into the economy, why were they being so stingy in the first place? If putting it back in is the solution, why did they take it out to begin with?

*sigh*

I shouldn't complain to you. You have nothing to do with it.

In other news, that advertising campaign I told you about a while back (the one that asked, “Why believe in a god?”) has spawned a response campaign here in the DC area.

The new adverts on busses say, “Truth” and “The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God.'”

I don't know who's running them, but I don't find them terribly effective. You don't win an argument with an atheist by quoting Scripture at her.

That just lowers the debate to the level of, “Oh yeah? Yeah! Oh yeah? Yeah!” or “Is not! Is too! Is not! Is too!”

(And the first person to yell, “Infinity!” wins.)

That's not a debate, it ain't helpful. Everyone needs to get out Monty Python's “Argument Sketch” and watch it again.

Also, the we will be celebrating (or have already celebrated, depending on when you're reading this) Washington and Lincoln's birthdays on Monday. Our first and sixteenth Presidents, respectively, those two men still have a large presence in our lives. This is especially the case for Lincoln, who, like President Obama, was from Illinois.

But Lincoln's birthday was officially on the 12th, as was Darwin's. Gallup, to mark the latter occasion, released a new survey, which found that roughly 40 per cent of Americans believe in evolution, while roughly 40 per cent have no opinion.

And, evidently, there are about four times as many evolution disbelievers amongst us weekly-church-goers than amongst the non-church-going crowd.

It would have been even more interesting to see the trends in the US over time, and in comparison with the rest of the world. I suspect the amount of scepticism about evolution is higher here than in Europe, for instance, and lower now than in the past. But who knows?

While scepticism about global warming seems to be becoming more respectable in the science community, I'm not sure about evolution-scepticism. There are plenty of intelligent critics of evolution-theory here in the States, but one gets the impression they're considered heretics.

Fortunately, I haven't heard of any mobs of scientists burning anyone at the stake recently.

Micah Tillman is a lecturer in the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America, and the curator of the WEeding Awards.

This will be Micah Tillman's last 'Postcard' for the moment. We're looking for correspondents based in the US to tell us about what's happening there - if you'd like to write for us, send an email to editor@sightmagazine.com.au.

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